She
condemned the local gentry as a collection of nobodies, and had never taken
the trouble to please the three or four great families within a twenty-mile
drive, because, though they had rank and consequence, they had not fashion.
The _haut gout_ of Paris and London was wanting to them.
Lord Fareham had insisted upon leaving London on the third of September,
and had, his wife declared, out of pure malignity, taken his family to
Fareham, a place she hated, rather than to Chilton, a place she loved,
at least as much as any civilised mortal could love the country. Never,
Hyacinth protested, had her husband been so sullen and ferocious.
"He is not like an angry man," she told Angela, "but like a wounded lion;
and yet, since your goodness took all the blame of my unlucky escapade upon
your shoulders, and he knows nothing of De Malfort's insolent attempt to
carry me off, I see no reason why he should have become such a gloomy
savage."
She accepted her sister's sacrifice with an amiable lightness. How could
it harm Angela to be thought to have run out at midnight for a frolic
rendezvous? The maids of honour had some such adventure half a dozen times
in a season, and were found out, and laughed at, and laughed again, and
wound up their tempestuous careers by marrying great noblemen.
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